Cancer diagnoses crisis after shutdown at Lucas Heights nuclear facility
Australia is facing a shortage of medicine vital for cancer diagnoses due to a mechanical fault at the Lucas Heights nuclear medicine facility.
Less than three months after production was suspended at the new Australian nuclear medicine facility when two workers were exposed to an unsafe dose of radiation, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation has confirmed another shutdown occurred on Friday.
While Ansto insists there are “no safety implications” from the failure, a shortfall in production of the radioisotope molybdenum-99 or Mo-99 could have severe implications.
Ansto admitted Australia was experiencing “significant impacts on availability of nuclear medicine”, and doctors have told Guardian Australia that unless production resumes they will be forced to “play Pontius Pilate” with their patients’ health.
“This will be a crisis by next week,” the director of Kalgoorlie Medical Imaging in Western Australia, Peter Tually, said. “I’m going to be presented with six or seven referrals and I’m going to have to make a decision about who I can see and who I can’t.”
The $168m nuclear medicine facility at Lucas Heights, south of Sydney, was announced by the federal government in 2012 with the goal of tripling Australian production of Mo-99, the parent isotope of Technetium-99m.
The isotope is used to diagnose a variety of heart, lung, organ and musculoskeletal conditions, as well as cancers.
Ansto said the supply of medicine made before Friday’s incident has been distributed to hospitals and nuclear medicine clinics, and it was working to “understand the cause of the mechanical defect, and safely rectify the issue”.
On Thursday, Ansto said it had secured a limited supply of MO-99 and would be able to supply it from next week.
“We expect that the amounts from overseas will gradually increase over the next three weeks, starting with 10 per cent of normal supply from next week and working up to around a third of normal supply by early next month,” Ansto said.
“Both investigations and work are continuing to safely progress mechanical repairs within ANSTO’s ANM facility.”
Tually, who has been critical of the handling of medicine shortages, said the medical industry was “again reeling” as a result of the shutdown.
“My job now is to determine which patient gets a test and which one has to miss out [and] they are not easy phone calls to make,” he said.
In June last year production was halted after another mechanical fault. On previous occasions Australia has sourced the product from South Africa or the United States.
The Ansto spokesman said the organisation was exploring the possibility of importing bulk medicine while
repairs were undertaken.
“Manufacturing will resume after the fault is safely and properly rectified,” he said. “We will keep the regulator and nuclear medicine community informed as we work to rectify this issue.”
He said “further rectification works will be carried out in a safe way that minimises health risk”, after approval from the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency.
Lucas Heights is only one of 11 reactors around the world that produces nuclear isotopes for medical imaging and treatment.
As well as providing about 85% of the nuclear medicine products used in Australian hospitals, it produces thousand more doses of Mo-99 for international patients.